by Billy Coffey
What bothered me was that before that last mission trip, Bobby was a much better Christian than I could have ever hoped to be. He had more faith, a stronger commitment, and a greater sense of purpose. And still, with all that, Katrina had convinced Bobby to turn his back on his faith. In the end, he just had to do his thing.
I supposed that after all these years, Bobby Barnes was still playing hide-and-seek. Maybe we all were in our own little ways. Sometimes it feels as though God goes hiding, and we all have to take our turn at being It. Bobby’s turn came down on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. He cried out to God in his anguish and doubt, but he didn’t get the sort of answers he wanted.
Bobby said God was squeezing him instead of comforting him. I’d always wondered about that. While that might have been true, I didn’t think God was trying to hurt him. I thought God was trying to hold him as tightly as He could. Bobby wanted reasons and words of comfort. God knew that the reasons were beyond what Bobby could possibly understand and that the comfort he needed could never come from mere words.
What Bobby needed was God. Just God. So God hung on to His precious, injured child, hung on tight, until Bobby would stop flailing in his despair.
But Bobby couldn’t wait that long. Like I said, he was never any good at seeking. Bobby hated being It. So he did what came naturally. When Bobby played hide-and-seek back in Bible school, he hid in the cemetery. Here all these years later, he was hiding among the dead again. Only this time it was the living dead.
But the rules were different now. This time Bobby was having a hide-and-seek with Someone who played much better than a bunch of eight-year-olds. We were too scared to go looking for Bobby in the cemetery. Not only was God not afraid of walking among the dead, He came down here willingly to do just that.
“Where are you?” God said to Adam and Eve after they bit into the apple, thereby starting the first game of hide-and-seek ever. What a strange question for Him to ask. God knew exactly where they were.
The question is, did they know?
Did Adam and Eve know the extent to which their world had just changed? Did they know that with all their newfound knowledge, they could still never undo what they had just done?
“Where are you?”
A question posed to every person who has ever walked upon the world since. It was a question Bobby faced as he hid and God sought.
“Where are you?” God was asking. “Doing your thing, I see. Are you happy? At peace? Do you finally have all you wanted? No? Then why don’t you try My thing instead? It’s much better, I promise. Olly olly oxen free!”
I dropped my hand back to the steering wheel and sighed. It was a good try, I thought. And I wasn’t going to give up. Bobby might not have been able to put all the pieces of his life back in place, but that was no reason to throw out the whole puzzle. We could all start over. It was one of the great beauties of life.
I hoped that Bobby played by the rules. I hoped that one day he would come home. That he would quit hiding and maybe even see that seeking really is the fun part of living. You never know. You just never know.
Bobby’s rear bumper passed mine. My eyes froze when I stole one last look into the rearview mirror. I saw something. It wasn’t much, and maybe it was something else entirely, but it was definitely something.
Bobby tapped his brake lights.
Tap, tap, tap.
I tapped mine, just to make sure.
He tapped his again.
You just never know. The nice thing about a two-lane road is that it goes both ways.
11
More Than We Can Bear
My cell phone rang just as I turned onto the main road leading home.
I remembered hearing a theory once that cell phones were the new cigarettes. You saw people with cell phones glued to their ears the same way you once saw people with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. Everyone had a cell phone now. It was part of the new, modern age. People could talk to one another no matter where they were or what they were doing.
It was a pity, though, that we rarely had anything worthwhile to say to one another.
I glanced down at the caller ID. It was Sammy at the factory. A chill that had nothing to do with the weather ran over me. Sammy never called unless he had news about one of two things: work or baseball. Since it was December and spring training wouldn’t start for another two months, that left only the other option. And if it was about work, he wouldn’t bother me on a day off unless it was something major. He knew how stressed out everyone in my work area had been lately, and Sammy knew the value of a snow day. He wouldn’t mess that up unless he had to.
I nonetheless decided to let it ring. Whatever he had to say could wait until tomorrow. I was trying to keep my vehicle in the road and protect my precious cargo of bread and milk and stocking stuffers in the back. I couldn’t talk on the phone. I had to concentrate.
“Hello?” I said, even before I realized I had picked up the phone and flipped it open.
“Peter, what’s up, man?” he said.
“Not much, Sammy. Just heading home from the Super Mart. Had to get some bread and milk for the family.”
“Bread and milk. Yeah, I guess I’m gonna have to go and get me some of that if I ever get out of here.”
“Better hustle then,” I said. “Pickin’s were getting a little slim already.”
“Yeah. Weather sucks, huh?”
“Yeah.” I was wondering when he was going to get to the point. I knew Sammy. The more he beat around the bush, the worse the news was bound to be.
“How many days until spring training?”
“Too many,” I answered. “So how’s things in the land where hope goes to die?”
He mumbled something, which was another sign that he didn’t really want to say what he had to say, which meant he was about to do some serious damage to my day, which meant that whatever was coming was—Exciting Announcement!!!—really, really bad.
“I didn’t get that, Sammy. What’d you say?”
“I said you picked a good day to take off.”
“There’s never a bad day to take off. Why?”
“Well, they just sent an e-mail around about the announcement.”
Another chill.
“Was it as exciting as they promised?” I asked.
“Well, if ‘exciting’ means people running around here screaming and cussing, then yeah, it was exciting.”
“What’s it say?” I said, trying to keep my hopes up. I’d been through this all before. The day I was hired, the plant manager told me I had a job for life. Three months later, I was facing a layoff. Six months after that, the company was sold. Another month after that, I was facing a layoff again. I had managed to slide through each time, but I was beginning to think it was inevitable.
“They’re cutting nine out of the area. Half. And they’re not going by job performance, either. It’s strictly seniority.” There was a pause. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
Yes. I knew what that meant. That meant I was done. I was third from the bottom in seniority. They were cutting nine. Being third was a long way from being tenth.
“So I guess that’s it, huh?” I said. The words were hollow and angry, and I didn’t care. The money I was making at the factory was money I couldn’t make anywhere else. Getting laid off would mean things I couldn’t bring myself to think about.
“Don’t worry about it, man. They still have to bargain things with the union, and that’ll take some time.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m in real good with the union these days, aren’t I?”
That got a chuckle out of him. “Oh yeah,” he said, “you’re their favorite person. They’ve threatened to sue you once, threatened to kick you out twice, and all because you can’t keep your mouth shut.”
“I’m all for the little guy, Sammy,” I said. “Sometimes you gotta step on some toes to get someone’s attention. I don’t think they’ll fight too hard to keep me from getting cut out
of the area.”
“But hey, even if you get cut out, there still might be something for you in another area.”
“That’s a big if, Sammy.”
“I know. But it’s something, right?”
“Yeah, it’s something,” I said between clenched teeth. Something like a load of—
“Well, I just thought I’d give you a heads-up. I know your phone will be ringing off the hook. I just wanted to let you know before the rumors start to fly.”
“I appreciate it,” I lied. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sammy.”
“Okay, man. Sorry I ruined your day. You’re better off, trust me. This place is goin’ down anyway. Just a matter of time. And hey, God won’t give you more than you can handle. That’s the Bible. You know that, right?”
“Yeah. See ya, Sammy.”
“Holla.”
And he hung up.
My first reaction was to call home and tell Abby what was going on. But there was no sense in doing that. I could tell her when I got there. Until then, at least she could enjoy her nice, quiet day off with the family. I closed my cell phone and flung it over my shoulder. It landed with a swish in a pile of bags somewhere in the back.
I couldn’t go home. Not just yet. For five years I had been bringing my work home with me, taking out my frustrations and anger on my family, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. I had to clear my head. Figure things out.
I took the next right off of Route 340 that led past the scrapyard and out to the road that passed by the high school. Jimmy Buffett was singing about trying to reason with hurricane season, and I turned the radio down a little. I was trying to deal with my own storms, and I needed a little quiet time.
Everything’s going to be okay. That’s what I told myself. Things had been bad before. But all those other times it was just Abby and me. Things take on a greater degree of urgency when you have children. What at one time might have been just a bump in the road suddenly looks like a mountain you’ll never see the other side of.
What was that Sammy had said?
“God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
People said that a lot. I’d said it many times myself. It was in that grouping of expressions that spiritual people use as consolations when there isn’t anything else they can say. “God won’t give you more than you can bear”—it’s right up there with “The Lord works in mysterious ways” and “All you can do is pray.” But was it true? Was what Sammy said right? It was the first time I had really cared to think about the validity of that statement.
“God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
Words spoken in the chaos of the hospital or the quietness of the graveside. Words given in comfort and hope that we can pull through, that there will be a brighter day, and that we are stronger than we think. God would shield us. God would put an end to our hurt before our hurt could put an end to us. We gave Him our hearts and our desires and our faith, and in turn He gave us His prosperity and His blessings and His protection. That’s the way it worked. The religious life is one of reciprocation. It was all give and take.
Right?
Maybe. But as I drove I tried to think about one verse of Scripture that backed all those ideas up. Sammy had told me the Bible said God wouldn’t give me more than I could handle. Try as I might, though, I couldn’t place that verse. I knew there was a verse that said God wouldn’t allow me to be tempted beyond more than I could bear. But that was a different thing altogether, wasn’t it?
I thought about my own situation. I was most likely going to lose my job. My wife taught at a private school and made maybe ten dollars an hour. We had some money in the bank, enough to get us through the next two or three months, but then we’d have nothing left. Ten years of savings would be gone and we would have to start from scratch. I would have to go out and try to find another job in a marketplace where there wasn’t much beyond pizza delivery and nursing. I would have to deal with the sense of failure I felt as the provider for my family. I would be a thirty-four-year-old husband and father who had to start all over again. Was that too much for me to handle?
You’d better believe it.
So where would I turn? What would I do?
For starters, I decided then and there I would read the Bible. I did that every day, but now I would read it with a greater sense of purpose. I would seek out the promises of God, and I would hold on to them as if my life depended on it. Because it did.
And I would pray. I did that every day, too, but I wouldn’t use the sort of canned Lord-thank-You-for-this and Please-bless-this prayers that I had gotten into the habit of saying. I would pray from necessity rather than memory. I would open my heart and my soul and not just my mouth. I wouldn’t just speak to God, I would talk with Him.
I would have to learn to depend upon Him rather than my paycheck.
In short, I could not see the end result of what I was going through. But I could, right there, see the end result of me.
I would become more than I was.
Life wasn’t all about pulling through to face brighter days. Sometimes it was about spending some time in the darkness and being soaked by the rain. Life hunted us with a big net, and sooner or later it would draw all of us in. It didn’t matter how good or pious or hardworking we were.
But that was not a sad realization for me. It was a good one. I knew that in the darkest night of my soul God would still be there, shining a candle for me and asking me to follow Him. He knew the way out.
And He would give me more than I could bear only to prove that there was nothing we couldn’t bear together.
12
Eugene Turner’s Luck
The trip to Super Mart had managed to suck my gas gauge from thirsty to parched, so I decided to stop by the local BP on the way home.
It had only been five years since I left my job pumping gas at the Amoco to go work at the factory. Everyone thought I had made the right choice: my wife, my parents, and even my boss said they didn’t blame me for leaving. I could make more money at the factory than I could ever make standing behind a cash register. But as I hit the Pay Inside button on the pump and waved to a couple of folks, I suddenly realized how much I missed working there. I missed the informality, the closeness. And the money wasn’t altogether awful. It paid the bills. In the end that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
I made thirty-seven thousand dollars my first year at the factory, twice as much as I’d ever made in one year in my life. The next, I made forty-two thousand. Last year, I made almost fifty. That was pretty good money for someone who barely made it out of high school. I felt like a millionaire. But what did all that buy me in the end? Sure, things would be okay for a while. But what about after that? What would I be left with after a few months of unemployment? A truck I soon wouldn’t be able to put gas in, a little insomnia, a little ulcer, and a big problem.
I was deep in thought over all of that when my eyes wandered over to the far end of the parking lot. Parked there with a For Sale sign in the window was a Hummer. Not one of the pretend models, either. This was the big daddy. And it was Eugene Turner’s.
Nice enough guy, Eugene. A regular in the gas station back when I worked there. He would stop every morning for his coffee and his can of snuff, both of which he would finish off sometime during the day as he piddled around town. Eugene was a genuine handyman, and it said so on the back of his truck. Also stated was the clichéd No Job Too Big or Small and his phone number, which were emblazoned onto the truck’s side panel with mailbox stickers.
Eugene was married—she was called Missy by the town folk, Sweet Thing by Eugene. He also had two kids (“the runts”), a mortgage, and some credit card bills. He worked hard, loved his life, and could never say no to the Cabela’s outdoor catalog he said Satan kept sending him in the mail. In other words, Eugene Turner was me.
Except for one small difference. While I had never been one to play the lottery, Eugene once made biweekly pilgrimages down to the 7-Ele
ven to beg a smile from the gods of fortune.
It was on a Sunday night three years earlier that Eugene stood at the cash register with a Lincoln in his hand as the ticket machine whirred and screeched and spit out five sets of numbers for the Powerball. He gave a thank-you, shoved the ticket into his pocket, and forgot about it.
Until the winning numbers were drawn the following Tuesday. Until Eugene walked into his bedroom and grabbed the crumpled sets of numbers off the dresser and flipped his old RCA on to channel six. Until he sat there on the edge of his bed in his oil- and grime-soaked coveralls (courtesy of Mrs. Dishman’s broken garbage disposal), slack-jawed and shocked beyond coherency as those little white Ping-Pong balls fell into place and the man in the cheap tuxedo read off all but one of the six numbers Eugene’s third pick had garnered him.
Eugene Turner had hit the lottery.
Well, not the lottery. But five numbers out of six. And how much did five numbers pay? When the man in the cheap tuxedo answered him (“And said it with a smile,” he later said, “right at me!”), he fell off the bed.
The ensuing thud sent Sweet Thing and the runts to investigate. Eugene was back on his feet by the time they reached the bedroom, jumping up and down and hollering like a man possessed. And why not? The man had just won almost half a million dollars.
Eugene called Mrs. Howell, told her he would not be coming over the next day to paint her living room, and offered his apologies. The family decided to celebrate by dining out. And there would be no Hardee’s for them on that night. No. The Turners were going to Shoney’s.
The Turners spent most of that first month living as large as they could. The old Honda and older truck that sat in their gravel driveway were replaced by a shiny Corvette and the Hummer, which opened the door to buying another house. Eugene figured it would be the epitome of redneck to have a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cars sitting in front of an eighty-thousand-dollar home. And if the Turners were anything now, it was not redneck. So they upgraded to a four-thousand-square-foot colonial in a fancy neighborhood that offered everything from a paved driveway to public water.
